According to the BBC, 443 people were killed in drug-related violence in Mexico this past July—more than in Iraq or Afghanistan. BBC correspondent James Painter said, “On one notorious day in July, a group of heavily armed men shot dead 12 people in three separate shoot-outs within a period of eight minutes.” The violent trend in Mexico is already several months old: so far in 2008, close to 3,000 people have been killed, surpassing the country’s death toll for all of 2007.

Mexico serves as the halfway point and main channel for drugs in transit from Colombia to the United States. A BBC world service poll reported that 42 percent of the 1,266 Mexicans polled in seven cities “felt less safe than they did a year ago.” Additionally, the BBC found conflicting responses: 68 percent of respondents believe in a military solution to drug trafficking, but 80 percent said the government should consider seeking other alternatives to end the problem. Since his 2006 election, President Felipe Calderon has installed 40,000 soldiers to battle the drug cartels.

On Sept. 15, a day before the 198th anniversary of Mexican independence, Calderon’s hometown of Morelia, Michoacán, was the site where unknown assailants launched grenades on a crowd of thousands, killing eight people in the first-ever attack aimed at civilians. In an editorial, the Austin American-Statesman wrote, “The hand grenades were hurled not only at the victims but also at national identity.” The newspaper added, “there is a glimmer of hope that the attack could be the catalyst for an elusive national unity necessary to face a grave threat to the republic’s stability.”

If that does happen, it would not be the first time Mexicans have come together in outrage over the ongoing violence. Prior to the grenade attacks, on Aug. 30, a series of grisly decapitations in the Yucatán, an assault on revelers in a dance hall and the death of a 14-year-old who had been kidnapped for ransom brought tens of thousands of peace protesters to Mexico City. While President Calderon argued that the rising violence is proof that his military is damaging gang structures and curbing their cash flows, some Mexicans disagree. Protestors, disillusioned with Calderon’s promises, chanted, “If you can’t [do it], resign!”

Conversely, an editorial in the San Antonio Express-News commended Calderon’s commitment to fighting the drug war, claiming that past governments avoided the problem altogether: “It may provide little solace to a nation weary of the violence, but the pushback by the criminals … was inevitable, and the violence the country is experiencing now reflects the lack of opposition in the past.” The Statesman editorial also claimed that the Mexico City peace protests were spearheaded by Calderon’s disgruntled presidential opponent, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who pledged to run a “shadow government.”

In May, Edgar Millan Gomez, one of Mexico’s top security officials and the national coordinator of the war on crime, was murdered in what appeared to be a revenge killing by one of Mexico’s most notorious drug cartels, the Sinaloa.

More than 500 Mexican police officers have died since Calderon began his offensive two years ago, prompting many officers to quit or flee to the United States. According to the Los Angeles Times, “Many municipal and state officers also work as hired gunmen for drug traffickers and often are caught up in feuds between rival gangs.”

Three men suspected of being involved in a deadly grenade attack that took place on Mexico’s Day of Independence, who were arrested in the Mexican state Zacatecas following a car crash, have been released. The assault, the first drug-related assault on civilians, injured hundreds and killed eight people (not seven as reported by the Associated Press here).

Last week, the DEA arrested 175 members of the Mexican drug cartel known as the Gulf Cartel. Drugs from the organization, located in Northeastern Mexico, flow from Colombia through Mexico and into Atlanta, Houston and Dallas. Police, who code-named the drug bust Project Reckoning, confiscated 35,000 pounds of cocaine and 1,000 pounds of methamphetamine. The DEA is also concentrating efforts to curb the drug flow to Europe—Italy in particular, which has grown due to the weakened U.S. dollar. Critics argue that a better way to end the drug war is helping addicts quit, removing the demand altogether.